nexus:Well, this is an early review.. you don't really see early reviews these days. Except for magazines so they can get it out on publication date.. but still.

I'll probably pick this up on release, I didn't realize it was more than just a standard FPS.

That's probably why they did early reviews. Far Cry isn't exactly a major franchise, so getting a lot of good word-of-mouth prior to launch will help drive up pre-orders.

I ended up pre-ordering after seeing the "Skyrim with guns" quote. This sounds like the shooter I've been waiting for. The closest I've come are action-RPGs like Fallout 3, but the combat mechanics tend to be ass in those games.

hmm, maybe i give this one a try once i have nothing better to play. dint like the first game and part 2 dint interest me at all. but part 3, sounds actually good. but im busy with other games now. so i might get it when its cheaper.

Everything in this game looks like an improvement, only thing that's really sad to see go is the organic interface of Far Cry 2. Pausing the game to look at maps only reminds you it's a game. Pretty much everything in Far Cry 2 was done in first person, it never took you out of the experience, and I wish more games would learn from that. It's the same kind of cool as Dead Space's holographic menus popping out of Isaac's suit.

JoesshittyOs:I'm glad to hear it's a good game. I think the Far Cry series has had a lot of potential.

Though is the stealth actually any good? I've heard that it was awful in the previous game, and I'm on the fence about buying it.

While I haven't played Far Cry 2, it does sound like stealth isn't really a means to an end in the series. If you're assaulting a compound, the odds are you won't be able to eliminate every single person without being seen. It's more about plotting a strike, sneaking deep into enemy territory, and unleashing the whirlwind after a few sneaky kills... or fucking up and having to improvise like mad.

Stealth in the original Far Cry (and non-stealth suit stealth in Crysis) is and has always been really tough. It's one of the few game series that doesn't bend over backwards to make stealth super-easy for you to do. In most games, you can crouch move through bushes unseen, which in reality looks like something moving through bushes unless you move really, really slowly which is why real-life snipers move slower than snails in such terrain.

I keep meaning to check out Far Cry 2, because I love the openness of the combat in the Cry games. At its best, it's about using stealth when stealth is useful, and blowing shit up when you've achieved the upper hand. Pure stealth is insanely hard to do and frontal assaults tend to be suicidal, so the game forces you to think through situations instead of relying on one or two basic tactics. Do you stealth your way to a powerful stationary gun? Do you Predator your way around the outer defences before launching an assault? Do you sneak in and use their defensive positions as cover to launch a run-and-gun assault? Do you muscle your way in through the front door in a vehicle?

the seem to have the ecosystem down pat and thats something ive been looking for in a game so ill definitely be picking it.. crap i forgot its ubisoft .. sigh and i really want it.. ethics vs I WANT IT.

What is terrible is that I may very well need a new PC to play this. Oh well, it's been a long time coming and I need a new rig once ArmA III hits as well, so it looks like I will be hitting up New Egg sometime soon! :D

Everything in this game looks like an improvement, only thing that's really sad to see go is the organic interface of Far Cry 2. Pausing the game to look at maps only reminds you it's a game. Pretty much everything in Far Cry 2 was done in first person, it never took you out of the experience, and I wish more games would learn from that. It's the same kind of cool as Dead Space's holographic menus popping out of Isaac's suit.

It's a shame that while it kept you immersed, the rest of the game was either broken or shit.

Everything in this game looks like an improvement, only thing that's really sad to see go is the organic interface of Far Cry 2. Pausing the game to look at maps only reminds you it's a game. Pretty much everything in Far Cry 2 was done in first person, it never took you out of the experience, and I wish more games would learn from that. It's the same kind of cool as Dead Space's holographic menus popping out of Isaac's suit.

It's a shame that while it kept you immersed, the rest of the game was either broken or shit.

I'd like to hear what was broken and shit. The respawning checkpoints, sure, bad design. But you were never forced to fight them. A lot of the problems people have with Far Cry 2 stems from the game not telling you the rules of the game. How the AI will react, how close is too close when sneaking outside tall grass, that gunshots will make nearby checkpoints send out search teams. I haven't encountered a single thing that was broken other than occassional AI hiccups.

Everything in this game looks like an improvement, only thing that's really sad to see go is the organic interface of Far Cry 2. Pausing the game to look at maps only reminds you it's a game. Pretty much everything in Far Cry 2 was done in first person, it never took you out of the experience, and I wish more games would learn from that. It's the same kind of cool as Dead Space's holographic menus popping out of Isaac's suit.

It's a shame that while it kept you immersed, the rest of the game was either broken or shit.

I'd like to hear what was broken and shit. The respawning checkpoints, sure, bad design. But you were never forced to fight them. A lot of the problems people have with Far Cry 2 stems from the game not telling you the rules of the game. How the AI will react, how close is too close when sneaking outside tall grass, that gunshots will make nearby checkpoints send out search teams. I haven't encountered a single thing that was broken other than occassional AI hiccups.

Shit: Story was terrible. Malaria was a bad mechanic because it took to long to deal with due to travel times being excessive even with the fast travel points. Your "friends" were almost useless in an actual fight, bullet sponging was the best use. You didn't see a single friendly character outside of the villages aside from your friends, which made the world seem empty. Even the factions you were trying to help would try to kill you, which was annoying as all fuck even if (terribly) explained.

Oh, the diamond system was stupid too. I'm glad you didn't need to upgrade your guns all that much, because searching for diamonds so I could have fun wasn't cool. It turned it into a grind. I realise there were ways to make it less of a grind, but it was still a grind if you wanted a lot of gear.

Broken: Stealth. Yes it was broken, it took enemies all of two seconds to spot you 300 meters away in a bush with a rifle. The AI had no real search mechanics. I know they tried the whole "react to sound" thing but it just meant that if you fired a gun within earshot, they'd instantly know where you are, rather than the general area. Its not like creeping up on them worked either. Silenced weapons were barely any better because the second they find a body they know where you are again aside from very rare occasions.

Checkpoints: You've mentioned the checkpoints which are one of the most annoying aspects, but you say you were never forced to fight them, which quite frankly isn't true. You can drive as fast as you want, they'll follow firing their mounted gun at you, getting the AI to send out more search teams. It doesn't end until you take them out. It was a major design oversight (which if i'm reading what other people are saying properly, they actually just couldn't fix the bug that was causing it) and it sucked.

Rusting guns:

No, guns should not rust that quickly. I'm using it, i'm firing it. If anything make it so something inside the gun breaks and I have to repair it. It was ridiculous how quickly the guns rusted.

But after all that

I wanted to like the game, I really did. The combat was pretty fun, it kept me immersed, I thought it was really cool. They just made the fun parts not worth the slog of dealing with the other parts. I had the most fun blasting through a camp with explosives because even if I managed it with stealth, it was because I was insanely lucky, not skilled. I played far cry 2 for a long time. Unfortunately, for every good experience I have with it, I have a stupidly long drive across the map to remember. Or a memory of enemies seeing me, crouching, not moving, not firing in long grass away from the path.

It's a shame that while it kept you immersed, the rest of the game was either broken or shit.

I'd like to hear what was broken and shit. The respawning checkpoints, sure, bad design. But you were never forced to fight them. A lot of the problems people have with Far Cry 2 stems from the game not telling you the rules of the game. How the AI will react, how close is too close when sneaking outside tall grass, that gunshots will make nearby checkpoints send out search teams. I haven't encountered a single thing that was broken other than occassional AI hiccups.

Shit: Story was terrible. Malaria was a bad mechanic because it took to long to deal with due to travel times being excessive even with the fast travel points. Your "friends" were almost useless in an actual fight, bullet sponging was the best use. You didn't see a single friendly character outside of the villages aside from your friends, which made the world seem empty. Even the factions you were trying to help would try to kill you, which was annoying as all fuck even if (terribly) explained.

Oh, the diamond system was stupid too. I'm glad you didn't need to upgrade your guns all that much, because searching for diamonds so I could have fun wasn't cool. It turned it into a grind. I realise there were ways to make it less of a grind, but it was still a grind if you wanted a lot of gear.

Broken: Stealth. Yes it was broken, it took enemies all of two seconds to spot you 300 meters away in a bush with a rifle. The AI had no real search mechanics. I know they tried the whole "react to sound" thing but it just meant that if you fired a gun within earshot, they'd instantly know where you are, rather than the general area. Its not like creeping up on them worked either. Silenced weapons were barely any better because the second they find a body they know where you are again aside from very rare occasions.

Checkpoints: You've mentioned the checkpoints which are one of the most annoying aspects, but you say you were never forced to fight them, which quite frankly isn't true. You can drive as fast as you want, they'll follow firing their mounted gun at you, getting the AI to send out more search teams. It doesn't end until you take them out. It was a major design oversight (which if i'm reading what other people are saying properly, they actually just couldn't fix the bug that was causing it) and it sucked.

Rusting guns:

No, guns should not rust that quickly. I'm using it, i'm firing it. If anything make it so something inside the gun breaks and I have to repair it. It was ridiculous how quickly the guns rusted.

But after all that

I wanted to like the game, I really did. The combat was pretty fun, it kept me immersed, I thought it was really cool. They just made the fun parts not worth the slog of dealing with the other parts. I had the most fun blasting through a camp with explosives because even if I managed it with stealth, it was because I was insanely lucky, not skilled. I played far cry 2 for a long time. Unfortunately, for every good experience I have with it, I have a stupidly long drive across the map to remember. Or a memory of enemies seeing me, crouching, not moving, not firing in long grass away from the path.

The story wasn't anything worth mentioning, and especially the ending with all your friends betraying you, shit. But that wasn't the meat of the game. You made your own stories through decisions and creativity.Malaria, I don't know what the point of that was either, but it only ever got really annoying when you ran out of pills and were forced to go find more immediately. But what many people misunderstand in Far Cry 2 is the long travelling. They see it as a bore, they want to be at the destination already. That's the thing the game taught me. The good parts of Far Cry 2 isn't just being in the mission area and doing what you're told to. The moment you get your mission you're on a mission, big part of the mission is getting there, it serves as a buildup to the climax. And more often than not, the moments that stand out the most are the ones you had on the journey.I don't think you were ever trying to "help" either faction. Hence why you couldn't choose to stick with one of them. You were a mercenary working for diamonds. It didn't matter what they had you do as long as you were paid.

Point taken about friendly faces, a few neutral NPCs here and there would've done much. And there's probably a lot of excuses to why there's none. The buddy system was pretty genius, it made your character vulnerable, instead of killing you outright, and thus ending your character's story, you got a second chance to overcome what downed you from a different angle with support. Other than that, the buddies were incredibly shallow.

You gotta work to have a lot of gear, simple as that. While I avoid grinding diamonds too, it only encouraged exploration.

And no, the stealth is by no means broken. But it's not very forgiving. Snipers and RPG nests will spot you from 300 meters away in a bush, it's what they're there for. You take them out first before moving in. During the day the AI will spot you in tall grass from a good distance, being stationary in a bush almost makes you invisible if you got the stealth suit. During the night your chances are much much better. If it's dark and the wind is rustling everything? Even better. I can consistently pull off stealth, make them suspicious, make them check out where they thought they saw something. Heck you can even plant a remote explosive close by to drag some of them away from you. What the game misses to make one-by-one stealth possible is quiet take-downs. It's rare you get lucky that their body falling to the ground won't alert nearby sentries. Instead stealth comes with the benefit of letting you plan the most efficient way to attack and place yourself accordingly. I even recorded a video or two on youtube of me using stealth in it.The thing that's broken about stealth is if you play it on the PC with a keyboard. The game uses your movement speed to decide your "spotting" radius. And when you're stuck with a digital input that's either no movement or full speed in either direction, that's when stealth becomes hard.

Fire spread in a circle if the wind wasn't blowing hard in a direction.

The thing is, driving a car near checkpoints is a risk. Get on foot and sneak around, or take a long curve around them in your car, and you won't have to deal with them. Again the problem is people want to get to their destination as fast as possible.They couldn't fix the respawning checkpoints because it was hardcoded into the game. The game wasn't coded to save any information about the checkpoints, so whenever you got far enough away from a checkpoint it'll unload the area out of your computer's memory. And when you came back, it'd load into the default state, being occupied and in one piece. There's no timers deciding it.

Guns detoriated, I thought it was an interesting mechanic, but poorly executed. It degrades from firing it, not from what kind of terrain you pull it through. Guns jam if they aren't maintained, and just grabbing a new one instead of giving an option to maintain your weapon feels stupid.

Yes the game has faults, but it's not faults so bad I think should put it in the "bad game" category.

Oh, the diamond system was stupid too. I'm glad you didn't need to upgrade your guns all that much, because searching for diamonds so I could have fun wasn't cool. It turned it into a grind. I realise there were ways to make it less of a grind, but it was still a grind if you wanted a lot of gear.

Searching for diamonds was a grind but shooting people wasn't? Dude, it's a shooter. For once a developer has the proclivity to put an actually interesting activity into a game instead of pointing the trigger at men and clicking a million times and you call it a grind? Well shit, no wonder I find the genre a borefest.

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

Oh, the diamond system was stupid too. I'm glad you didn't need to upgrade your guns all that much, because searching for diamonds so I could have fun wasn't cool. It turned it into a grind. I realise there were ways to make it less of a grind, but it was still a grind if you wanted a lot of gear.

Searching for diamonds was a grind but shooting people wasn't? Dude, it's a shooter. For once a developer has the proclivity to put an actually interesting activity into a game instead of pointing the trigger at men and clicking a million times and you call it a grind? Well shit, no wonder I find the genre a borefest.

Shooting people is never boring as long as the AI is challenging in combat. Diamonds require no skill to go get, you literally have to just follow your little light. A grind is when you do something over and over again, gunfights change. In fact, the combat is the one thing I can't fault far cry for. The AI is actually pretty decent to fight, but only if you're actually trying to fight them, not sneak around.

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

Oh, the diamond system was stupid too. I'm glad you didn't need to upgrade your guns all that much, because searching for diamonds so I could have fun wasn't cool. It turned it into a grind. I realise there were ways to make it less of a grind, but it was still a grind if you wanted a lot of gear.

Searching for diamonds was a grind but shooting people wasn't? Dude, it's a shooter. For once a developer has the proclivity to put an actually interesting activity into a game instead of pointing the trigger at men and clicking a million times and you call it a grind? Well shit, no wonder I find the genre a borefest.

Shooting people is never boring as long as the AI is challenging in combat. Diamonds require no skill to go get, you literally have to just follow your little light. A grind is when you do something over and over again, gunfights change. In fact, the combat is the one thing I can't fault far cry for. The AI is actually pretty decent to fight, but only if you're actually trying to fight them, not sneak around.

Now you're just being selective. Gunfights are all the same to me. Point the trigger at the target and away you go. I can't remember the way diamonds were sought in Farcry 2 but it's clear that it, at least, could have been both challenging and interesting. Puzzles to work out to find way-points, terrain to navigate to find a passage, people to interrogate to get info. The task in itself is far more interesting to me than the simple killing.

I'd agree with you if it used terrain well and let me navigate and it looks like far cry 3 will let me do that. My problem is in far cry 2 you couldn't do that. Most diamonds were "follow the light on your wrist" like a game of hot cold. They could have turned that into something cool but they just shoved diamonds on top of rocks for the majority of them and went "welp, that'll do".

At least with far cry 3 the island looks rather fun to explore and it looks like they've fixed a lot of the stuff that went wrong with the last game. I'm looking forward to it, but only after i've heard some things from my friends.

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

The point is, Far Cry 2 is not a bad game. But most people didn't like it. And that's fine, I hate Call of Duty and it's scripted campaign, I think it's the enemy of good games. Millions of others buy it every year regardless of my opinion.So what if a mission takes over an hour? If you find travelling and encountering dynamic scenarios is boring, then Far Cry 2 is indeed not for you. But that doesn't make it a bad game. You're trying to play a different game than Far Cry 2 is.

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

The point is, Far Cry 2 is not a bad game. But most people didn't like it. And that's fine, I hate Call of Duty and it's scripted campaign, I think it's the enemy of good games. Millions of others buy it every year regardless of my opinion.So what if a mission takes over an hour? If you find travelling and encountering dynamic scenarios is boring, then Far Cry 2 is indeed not for you. But that doesn't make it a bad game. You're trying to play a different game than Far Cry 2 is.

Your entire argument is now "I think its a good game, you're just playing it wrong". Which I find hilarious, because it was meant to let you play however the hell you wanted to. If you're going to ignore every single point i've thrown across and say "well I liked it, so its not bad" then i'm done here.

That is exactly my argument. Not all games are supposed to be played the same like you're arguing now. I've counter argued the points you were wrong about, and acknowledged the others that are either down right bad, or undeveloped. But you're basically saying you wanted to take straight drives towards the objective with no confrontations? Is that honestly more fun? You're in a hostile enviroment, come on, no way it's ever going to be a safe drive. That's the setting, that's the game. How you confront each checkpoint is part of the story you create. I'm sick of games that tell me how to do everything. Far Cry 2 gives you the freedom to be creative in your approaches. But people are only focusing on going to that objective and flipping a switch. Would it be better if they dotted the path towards the objective and told you to shoot this guy first, then the other guy? Make your own objectives. Use your damn creativity.

We finally get a game that isn't telling us how to do everything, but people are too accustomed to being told how and when to do everything that they think a lack thereof is bad. It's not perfect, nobody ever said it was, but it's a lot closer than we've been in many years. Even a game like Deus Ex: Human Revolution that prides itself as an RPG had less freedom.

I'm going to sum this up with "you realise you've just excused it for every bad design decision they made because you liked it, right?". The majority of the people who played the game didn't like it because it was boring. It was fun for a couple of hours, the travelling, the grinding, everything. Then I realised that I actually wanted to be playing the game and sneaking across the game map wasn't playing the game, especially seeing as if you wanted to get anything done within a sensible time (sensible being within an hour for a mission) you had to drive fast and then get the heat off you when you got there.

After the novelty of exploration wears off, the game really has nothing to keep you going. It stops being "lets sneak past this checkpoint" and becomes "for fucks sake, I have to go past that again!".

The point is, Far Cry 2 is not a bad game. But most people didn't like it. And that's fine, I hate Call of Duty and it's scripted campaign, I think it's the enemy of good games. Millions of others buy it every year regardless of my opinion.So what if a mission takes over an hour? If you find travelling and encountering dynamic scenarios is boring, then Far Cry 2 is indeed not for you. But that doesn't make it a bad game. You're trying to play a different game than Far Cry 2 is.

Having not played Far Cry 2 (played the PC version of Far Cry 1), it sounds like it's stuck in that awkward phase of sandbox games, where you have these huge commutes between missions (Far Cry and Crysis had this problem IMO), but without doing what it needed to do to make that interesting to most players.

To use Fallout 3 and Skyrim as examples, the game knows that exploration is key, so you're required to find locations first, but because they know you'll often want to travel there quickly, they have a robust Quick Travel system so you're not constantly dragged into random skirmishes you're not interested in dealing with. Half the time I'll just walk wherever I need to go, because getting distracted from your objective is half the fun... but sometimes you just want to get the job done and those distractions are a giant pain in the ass.

And I agree with your observations about stealth based on my experience with Far Cry 1. Stealth was possible, but the game didn't program in a lot of artificial stupidity to make it easy. You couldn't just crouch walk your way through brush and expect them not to notice you, because you're a six foot man in a loud Hawaiian t-shirt. But half the fun of Far Cry was utilizing stealth to plan an assault.

Of course, in that game, everyone complained about snipers taking them out from a mile down the road. Which probably says a lot about who does and doesn't like these kind of games. If you think walking down a road to an enemy base is how a game should be played, you'll hate Far Cry, because the game will absolutely punish you for doing something like that. It's a game for the guy who wants to circle round the back and hop a fence.